


The Blaring Madness of it All

by Sukila



Series: Hello Charlotte Week (Sept. 22 - 28) [1]
Category: Hello Charlotte (Video Game), Hello Charlotte (Video Games)
Genre: #hellocharlotteweek, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Concussions, Delusions, Flash Forward, Flashbacks, Hallucinations, Hello Charlotte Week - Day 1, Minor spoilers for HC3, Night Terrors, Post-Concussion Syndrome, Rabbits, Sad theories, Teddy Bears, Vomiting, also scary bears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-10 18:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15954644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sukila/pseuds/Sukila
Summary: “Another one?” Seth questions as her hands reach to grab at the fluffy beast with childish eagerness.She tells him to quiet that talk, it was cute, that was all the reason she needed to bring it along. But then…Another one?She didn’t have a rabbit at home, not anymore, but it did look an awful lot like Felix. Charlotte thinks, maybe, Huxley could’ve stolen away with his little nephew’s rabbit ears, pink and drooping beside his head, but always at attention on the man in the gas-mask.Always so pink in those halls, invisible particles floating about in the oxygen and making it sweet yet foul like a fog of pink that puts cotton in human ears. Or a sandman who only sought to daze his victims, leaving them awake yet unaware, without sleep yet somewhat in a doze.The thought put her train of thought on a tangent, hands idly messing with the azure ribbon (then why is it still gray?) hanging from the bunny’s neck. Without meaning to, she found herself with a dead bunny, hung by a little noose of felt and sadness.It did look an awful lot like Felix.





	The Blaring Madness of it All

“Have you seen a little boy around here?”

 

The Pythia girl pouts, biting her lip and making wide, teary eyes, “Freya is waiting for someone, big sister.”

 

“Oh…” Charlotte states cautiously, “Who?”

 

Her expression turns sour, little arms moving to beckon the human away while making space between them in the hall, “Leave. Freya doesn’t talk to strangers.”

 

And she does, promptly turning on her heel and returning to her hunt for Huxley’s nephew. Seth’s voice seems to fade away from her ears and the building grows longer and longer as she walks. Footsteps silenced by the squish of the overly puffy carpeting that leaves markings with every push of her strides.

 

The room she comes to is brightly lit, a noticeable difference from the previous dimming lights of the halls, blinking each second spent in their company like nervous fireflies. The Pythia’s words haunt her as her eyes land on a rabbit toy and its friend, sitting innocently, side-by-side.

 

“Another one?” Seth questions as her hands reach to grab at the fluffy beast with childish eagerness.

 

She tells him to quiet that talk, it was cute, that was all the reason she needed to bring it along. But then…

 

_“Another one?”_

 

She didn’t have a rabbit at home, not anymore, but it did look an awful lot like Felix. Charlotte thinks, maybe, Huxley could’ve stolen away with his little nephew’s rabbit ears, pink and drooping beside his head, but always at attention on the man in the gasmask.

 

Always so pink in those halls, invisible particles floating about in the oxygen and making it sweet yet foul like a fog of pink that puts cotton in human ears. Or a sandman who only sought to daze his victims, leaving them awake yet unaware, without sleep yet somewhat in a doze.

 

The thought put her train of thought on a tangent, hands idly messing with the azure ribbon (then why is it still gray?) hanging from the bunny’s neck. Without meaning to, she found herself with a dead bunny, hung by a little noose of felt and sadness.

 

_It did look an awful lot like Felix._

 

A flash of something in her mind, bright and glaring, something anyone would want to avert their gaze from; yet hers remained locked.

 

_“-hide and seek!”_

 

_“Aw, it’s broken… How sad.”_

 

_Guts in the machine, burning and melting and falling apart as it stained the inside red-_

 

“Seth,” She said, seemingly caught in a daydream as her pupils dilated and her voice went eerily calm, “Have we been here before?”

 

_“What did you do to him?! Monsters!”_

 

Panic set in, “Seth?”

 

_“The Ora-”_

 

_“Scar-tt Ey-”_

 

_“I- I’m n-n-n-not alone anymore.”_

 

“Seth, what-?!” A resounding _smack!_ A, now clearly concussed, girl falling to the floor and reaching out hands only to grasp nothing but pain and bright red stars that haunt delirious vision. A bear stands over her, huffing and growling as its claws tore apart the hanging bunny and blood pooled on the floor as the silence turned to vicious insanity ringing with alarm bells.

 

-

 

She blinks a few times, red flooding her senses as oversaturated colours jump out in shadows and outlines of the room before her. The little Pythia stands over a teddy bear, motionless besides the reflex of its body as she hit it again and again with book after book. Fluff and guts were strew about the room, and in the girl’s hands was the same beheaded bunny, a deep clawmark in its chest, still.

 

“Big sister…” She says, turning towards her and looking down at her form from above as Charlotte lay on the floor; blood on her hands and speckled in her hair and on her face.

 

“Freya found her person!” She exclaimed, smiling and happy as can be, practically shaking with excitement as she held up the broken bunny with two hands, the other being carried on her back and still hanging off her shoulders despite nothing to keep it there.

 

Charlotte blinks at her, rapid and without understanding before promptly turning over to vomit before carefully lifting herself back onto her feet as dizziness pulled at her senses.

 

“Your...person?” She asked, slurring her words a bit.

 

“There was no one but Freya, she was fine on her own, but Freya is happy to have her person with her!” She insisted, before cocking her head, eyes opening again to stare deeply into Charlotte’s eyes, “Where is your person, big sister?”

 

“I’m going to find him!” She says, suddenly feeling panicked and scared, falling over backwards in her attempt to make space between them before crawling backwards on her hands. Her back hit the wall in no time and Freya put her face so close their noses nearly touched.

 

_Head in her hands, smiling face smothered in white hair stained with splotches of blood, screams, so many of her screams, scissors finding their way into her neck-_

 

“Will you, Wiltshire?” Mask on her face, whispering a message, imprinting a new reality into her own that she’d never wanted to see, “Or will you finally prove her wrong…?”

 

**“Scarlett. Eyler.”**

 

-

 

Cold sweat streaming down her back, hands in her hair, ripping out the red that turned white as it fell onto the bed, the whines of Magcat as it was coated in the strands and the stickiness clinging to the clumps of torn scalp.

 

“No…” She finally said, curling into a ball beneath the sheets as her fists balled in the covers, “Nononononononono-!”

 

And her hand crept beneath her bed, fishing out a bunny toy by the ribbon on its neck, eyes red as always, pink having long since faded into a brighter shade- It had been so long since she’d been given it-

 

No…

 

She threw it across the room and ran out, hearing a distant thunk against the wall and a louder one from when Magcat tried to follow and the door was slammed shut. She felt bad, but she couldn’t be near that place anymore, padding towards the kitchen and idly chatting with Seth about a midnight snack.

 

Felix sat at the table, head in his hands, a soap bottle by his feet that was near empty, contents slightly spilled onto the floor.

 

_It did look an awful lot like Felix._

 

And although he’d usually complain, he said nothing like that as she sat beside him, just a few simple words, in fact: “Human… Charlotte...I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s okay,” She replied, turning to give him a sad but big smile that he returned with a slight quirk of his lips upward, “I found you, didn’t I?”

 

He turned back to the wall, staring at nothing, the beginning of a smile on his face that finally outdid the guilt he’d been feeling, “You did.”

 

And though the alarms rang on, she slept just fine under his watchful gaze, head in her arms and mind in the clouds.


End file.
